...Perhaps that seems obvious in some respects! However there are subtle changes in viewpoint across certain areas and regions which play into one's own perspective. For any who have moved about in the course of their lifetimes, the differences really stand out. Even though my U.S. residences have only included four states (thus far, at any rate) I've noticed tremendous differences in the ways people approach life and how they relate to others around them, depending on population densities, sources of income, distances from the coasts and the lay of the land. Certainly, there is little in the dialogues of the presidential races which captures those realities, as candidates troop across the countryside shaking hands. But those differences ultimately matter for our national government, just the same.
Oftentimes, it is the places that are most isolated, which tend to be the most dependent on government at the national level. Needless to say, rural areas dislike that dependence, even if the more prominent political reactions and strategies sometimes make little sense in that regard. After the Great Depression, life in such places changed radically over time, as earlier forms of sustenance gave way to a growing series of services, whose institutions often depended on command structures far removed from the small towns to which they came and set up shop.
In the earlier part of the twentieth century, people who were born and raised in the countryside tended to migrate to the larger cities around them, or perhaps a major city in a neighboring state, for the most active parts of their economic lives. Many, as they grew older, would eventually return to the country, sometimes reclaiming former homesteads along with other family members to live out their later years. Not only was such a strategy rational in terms of saving for retirement, it gave people a chance to be "where the action is" in the years they especially wished to explore the world around them. Later, they gained the chance to reconnect with the places fondly remembered from their youth.
However, for today's youth in such areas, the strategies of their parents and grandparents are not quite so doable. Moving to a city at adulthood doesn't necessarily provide the same "payoff" in economic stability that it once represented. Just the same, that does not mean other economic opportunities really exist closer to home. Besides a smattering of retail and possibly some real estate offices, most jobs that do exist are often filled by earlier "transplants" or else locals who may hold such positions for years. Real jobs in such places sometimes seem like such a rarity that I remember one young girl who expressed awe how one of her aunts was able to secure a reliable government job. Perhaps that's when it really hit home for me, that the world of work I took for granted for so long, was a bit more fragile than it seemed. How can people such as this willingly accept outsiders in their midst, when they can no longer provide work or economic stability for their own?
Such social and economic mobility has slowed down in the U.S., for many reasons. However, that lack of economic mobility over time creates real differences in familial and economic relations, leading to polarization and differences in outlook not so easy to remedy as when different social classes and populations more readily mixed with one another over the course of their lifetimes. People such as myself feel this to be a loss, but that is because of my perspective and the fact that I especially enjoyed living among populations of which a fair number had recently migrated from other areas. While people who have lived in one area might not feel that intermingling of migrants is actually a loss, the fact that such mobility has declined still affects local outlooks as to the outside world: perspectives which leave negative economic effects in the long run.
The biggest problem when it's just the locals left, is that the old independence that really mattered is largely gone, and there is not a true self sufficiency which actually takes its place. To be sure, rural folk still garden, hunt, fish, and raise livestock, but without real economic links to the world, that kind of self maintenance can become hardscrabble in a hurry, even if it "looks good" from the outside. Such places need to be able to participate, once again, in wealth that is not just defined as local sustainability, but also the kinds of wealth which cities, larger towns and global economies benefit from. Otherwise, coming cutbacks in government services will only hit such areas even harder, in the near future.
Government tried to make many promises to its citizens in the earlier years of the twentieth century, and some of those promises involved drastic changes in lifestyle which no longer pay off as they once did. While cities struggle with the same problems, of course, people who live in the cities have not lost informal and volunteer methods of social cooperation to the same degree that has happened in rural areas. In summary, this really needs to be addressed, and the sooner the better. Every time another school closes or consolidates, another form of local participation is lost, and such areas even become more dependent on the outside world, when what they need most is to find true means of support from within. We can't just let such places fall apart economically from our government's broken promises, even if it's not easy to know where to start. What happens in the hidden places of the U.S. matters for every citizen of this country.
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